Brown, who wants a tuition freeze, proposes faster completion of degrees and greater use of technology to expand class offerings

Headlines about Gov. Jerry Brown’s newly proposed funding increase for higher education have largely focused on state-funded public colleges saying they won’t raise tuition for the 2013-14 school year, a development cheered by students and parents alike.

Lesser known is that Brown also wants the University of California, California State University and community college systems to rein in costs, operate more efficiently and get students to obtain their diplomas more quickly.

In recommending more money for these colleges and calling on them to freeze tuition for four years, the governor outlined several ways to yield savings. Those include using technology to educate more students at a lower cost, shortening the time it takes to earn a degree and improving graduation rates.

“The phrase is deploy your teaching resources more effectively,” Brown said during a news conference Thursday. “The point is, we want more kids to be able to get through school quicker without pushing up costs.”

Some critics said they welcome Brown’s push for efficiency but believe the state needs a much deeper review of its higher education systems to ensure they meet the needs of California’s students and 21st-century economy.

“Most of the things that are on the budget that I’ve seen are ... constructive but modest initiatives,” said Patrick Callan, president of the nonprofit Higher Education Policy Institute in San Jose. “I think the state has much bigger issues in higher education than that budget would suggest, and the kinds of initiative he is bringing to other areas — big systemic reforms — are missing here.”

Callan and others view the state’s approach to higher-education funding as shortsighted, although they acknowledge not having immediate recommendations on what a broad revamp of public colleges in the state should involve.

“My reaction was, here we go again. This is what happens after a recession because legislators and the governor are getting so much push-back about tuition from the public,” said Joni Finney, director of the Institute for Research in Higher Education at the University of Pennsylvania. “It is politically a popular thing to do, but it is not a long-term plan.”

Finney, who spent 15 years in California studying and working on higher-education policy before moving to Pennsylvania, predicted that the next-generation college students in the state would face even higher fee spikes after the proposed tuition freeze ends.

“It really kicks the ball down the road and California is great at that — of putting off current problems into the future,” Finney said. “What we really need is a finance plan and a master plan that really works in California for the next 20 or 30 years.”

Brown said in his budget summary that even though UC and CSU have pursued “administrative efficiencies” that reduced expenses, their overall spending increased and had to be offset by tuition and fee hikes. The result, he said, is that higher education in the state has become less and less affordable.

The governor said between 2007 and 2012, when other state agencies were making cuts, UC expenditures jumped by 15 percent and CSU expenditures rose by 3 percent. In that same period, UC tuition and fees went up by $5,556, and the CSU figure increased by $2,700.